November 22, 2011

This San Francisco house was briefly mentioned in the zip code series this past weekend, and really deserves an appearance of its own. It’s not just a really expensive house in San Francisco, it looks like it comes with a huge number of challenges opportunities waiting to happen!

Large, Italianate view mansion. Four floors of occupancy. Formerly occupied as 11 units and presently vacant. Conditional Use Authorization obtained in 2009 to merge 11 units to 2 units (home with apartment). Although most original details remain, the home requires extensive remodelling in order to enjoy the 2013 America’s Cup.

This looks like a house that needs an in-person visit, what with the MLS not specifying how large the house or the lot is, or showing very many pictures either. When there are more snaps of the view than the house, you know it isn’t going to be “turnkey.” Instead, get your work gloves ready, because you’ll be spending the next year and a half fixing up this place in order to enjoy the 2013 America’s Cup.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to watch it on television?

Anyway, the public records say the home is 7335 square feet on a 6187 sf lot. No bedrooms but 12 bathrooms, formerly 11 units rented out. Given how tight the rental market is in SF, how do you think the tenants were cleared out? Arson? Blackmail? Cockroaches? Dynamite?

Here’s a couple comments on this home from Socketsite, back in 2009 when another Pacific Heights home that had been chopped into apartments failed to sell and was withdrawn from the market.

Posted by: Jake at March 27, 2009 2:51 PM

This would have been a great house if left alone.
The problem is that there was a period from the
thirties to the fifties when large houses were treated as white elephants. Many of them have been returned to their architecturally natural use.

Including… I am pleased to report, the James Francis Dunn mansion on Vallejo, for which the Planning Commission, in a moment of unusual enlightenment, approved, Thursday, a “dwelling unit merger” of eleven to two units!

Hooray for common sense! Commissioner Borden observed that the purpose of denying mergers was to preserve affordable housing, and apartments on this street would not be affordable by any measure.
The building is owned by the Rossi family, who as they noted, contributed a Mayor to SF.

Posted by: Conifer at March 28, 2009 11:02 PM

Holy Crap! I can’t believe that unit merger went through! I thought it would be DOA so I never bothered to check the commission’s decision. It was absolutely the right decision. 2250 is arguably THE most beautiful home on Vallejo St and should never have been chopped up.

James Francis Dunn is not the owner but the architect of this house, and he designed a number of “French Renaissance” apartment buildings throughout San Francisco. This book on Pacific Heights homes states that building an actual house was a departure for Dunn, and features this nice line drawing above.

The SF Chronicle article on Dunn’s designs describes this house in a footnote: “2250 Vallejo St., in Pacific Heights, originally a single-family house, is a playful take on Italian Renaissance with beautiful proportions and detailing.”

That’s a lot of Frenchified talk for what’s really important. KAWLUMS! And finding an agent who can’t spell remodeling but can walk you through an eight million dollar transaction. Best of all, this “architectural pastry” has the icing on its street name: associated with a large, prolonged bankruptcy.

Love the site, but not sure why you make fun of “remodelling”. That is the standard way of spelling that word in Britain and Australia, and apparently acceptable in the US according to various web based dictionaries (although one can take that with a grain of salt).

“Remodeling” kicked “remodelling” to the curb way back around the turn of the last century. Anyone who went to school since 1950 should get it right. And surely a Real Estate Agen ™ should be able to use the most common spelling.

I’m really curious what the floor plan is like to squeeze eleven apartments out of a 7335 sq. ft-ish former house. Do the units have kitchens or are they just really large bedrooms with water closets? How much of the original “common spaces” like the (presumably huge) kitchen and dining rooms still exist? It’s pretty damning that the listing’s documentation of the interior consists of a single “look, a staircase!” shot. Amusingly enough if you divide 7335 by 11 the answer is “666” (ignoring the decimal place). I suppose that’s an appropriate number to describe the “remodeling hell” anyone who touches this place is going to find themselves in.

I will agree that if any house featured by Burbed recently has earned its “KAWLUMS” it’s this one, but I’m not sure the “Big Square Italian-esque House” thing really works for me. Looking at it all I can think of is the evil mobster’s house from the Bronson Pinchot movie “Blame it on the Bellboy”

That’s pretty cool, but are books published in the UK adequately represented? How about programme, humour, and, for the sake of burbed, storey? (As in “I have a two story/storey house.) The British spellings always lose out. American imperialism is squashing culture. Just ask the French.

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